"Is Gring there? I wish to speak to him," Hitler snapped.

"Nein, mein Fhrer. He is on the street. The entire area between Tiergartenstrasse and the Augustastrasse is cordoned off. The SA are trapped in the middle. Nothing gets in or out."

"Excellent. Do not move until I give the word."

"Of course, mein Fhrer, " Himmler answered.

Hitler cradled the phone.

He went back to the window. The storm clouds raced across the night sky. To the north, the lightning still brightened the heavens. But it was clear that the storm was moving on. Hitler took it as a final sign.

He whirled on Vierhaus. "People must be convinced that this plot to overthrow the government was real," he said. "Rhm is not unpopular, you know."

"You can make people believe anything if you tell them in the proper way," Vierhaus said softly.

Hitler shook his head violently.

"Ja, ja! But it must come from me. It must be in my words. The people know my words."

He strolled around the room, stopped and stared at the wall for several minutes.

"Let me tell you something, Willie," he said. "The world is ruled by fear and the most effective political instrument of fear is terror. Terror conditions people to anticipate the worst. It breaks the will. The people must understand that this . . . insurrection . . . cannot-will not-be tolerated ever again. Hmm?" He nodded approval of his own words.

"So . . . Rhm plans to overthrow the Fhrer, does he?" Hitler said with a sneer of satisfaction. "Well then, call the airport. I want to know when we can leave for Munich. We will initiate Hummingbird immediately."

He looked at his diminutive sycophant.

"Let the killing begin," he hissed.

As they approached Brown House, Hitler could see Reinhard Heydrich standing at attention on the front steps with half a dozen men behind him. There was no mistaking Heydrich. Even in the darkest moments before dawn, his tall, gaunt, ramrod figure was unmistakable. As they drew closer, Heydrich's cadaverous features and dead eyes were highlighted by street lamps. Hitler felt a sudden chill. There was something about Heydrich. He was almost too efficient, like a bloodless robot. But he was integral to Hitler's plans, a man who took orders without hesitation and who performed admirably. When Vierhaus had discovered that Heydrich's grandmother, Sarah, was Jewish, Hitler had officially purged him of his "tainted blood," making Heydrich an Aryan by decree.

One of his men sprang to the armored car and opened the door. Heydrich cracked his heels together as Hitler got out and snapped his arm out in the Nazi salute.

"Heil Hitler."

Acknowledging the salute, the dictator asked, "Well, Heydrich, how does it go?"

"We arrested Schneidhuber and his assistant, Schmid, without incident. They are under guard along with a dozen other SA who were here already, all under house arrest. All protesting bitterly."

"Of course," Hitler snapped. Schneidhuber, a former army colonel, was the Munich chief of police and the highest ranking SA official in the city. It was rumored he would be Rhm's chief of staff if the Wehrmacht and SA merged.

"Schneidhuber," he growled under his breath as he followed Heydrich into the lobby of the Nazi headquarters building. Schneidhuber was a heavyset man in his late forties who affected the turned-up wax mustache and monocle of the Prussians. His thick lips seemed permanently curved into an arrogant sneer. He was in SA uniform as was his aid, Edmund Schmid, in stature a smaller version of his boss. Small and rotund, he had the dull look of a typical sycophant.

Upon seeing them, Hitler went into a violent rage. His face seemed to swell up. Veins stood out in his forehead and his color turned from white to red almost to purple.

"You traitor!" he screamed at Schneidhuber. "You miserable pig of a man!"

"Mein Fhrer, " Schneidhuber pleaded. "I don't underst-"

"Shut up! Shut . . . up!" Hitler bellowed. He began to shake. Suddenly he reached out and grabbed the SA insignia on the police chief's epaulets and tugged at them, jerking the stout officer back and forth, until part of one of the sleeves tore away.

"You are beneath the contempt of everyone, everyone, Schneidhuber, you hear me! You . . . are . . . a . . . yellow, incompetent, lying . . ."

He stopped and backed away, still clutching the handful of cloth, then dropped it and clawed for his pistol.

Heydrich stepped around him, drew his Luger and held it at arm's length, six inches from Schneidhuber's face.

"Mein Gott!" Schneidhuber screamed, a moment before the pistol roared in his face and he felt the burning gasses scorch his face and the sudden explosion in his brain. His head jerked back and he sprawled on the floor, his forehead scorched by the hot powder. The small, singed, nine-millimeter hole was squarely between his eyes.

Schmid fell against the wall. His knees buckled. He held his hand at arm's length in front of his face.

"Please," he whined.

Heydrich fired the first shot into the palm of Schmid's hand. It ripped through both hands and creased Schmid's forehead. The little man fell screaming to the floor and Heydrich leaned over and shot him behind the ear.

Heydrich turned to Hitler.

"They were beneath your effort, mein Fhrer, " he said.

"Quite right, quite right," a shaken Hitler said. "Where are the others. How many are at the hotel?"

"Half a dozen," Heydrich answered. "The rest will start coming in by train about six."

"Good. Assign a man to the station with a detail. Arrest them as they arrive. Execute them all." He looked down at the spreading red stain on the marble floor. "And clean this mess up. Get rid of the ones that are here now."

"Yes, mein Fhrer. Heil Hitler."

Hitler raised his hand in a hurried salute as he walked out the door. Heydrich took three men and went to the conference room where the six SA officers were under house arrest. He opened the doors leading to the courtyard and grabbed a young lieutenant by the arm and shoved him out the door.

"Heydrich, what on earth is happening?"

"You have been condemned to death by the Fhrer."

"Why, for God's sake? We are not guilty of anything!"

"The charge is treason. Heil Hitler!" And Heydrich shot him in the chest. The lieutenant grunted as the bullet smacked into his body, knocking his wind out. He fell in a sitting position, and looked up just as Heydrich fired a second shot. It hit him in the eye. The other five were shoved through the doors and as they screamed innocence and pleaded for life, they were gunned down and shot repeatedly after they had fallen.

Later in the day, Hitler sat behind his desk in Brown House, arms stretched out and resting on his desk. In front of him was Eicke's death list. Vierhaus had been checking off the names throughout the day.

Himmler had ordered one hundred and fifty SA cadets and another hundred brownshirt leaders taken to the old military jail outside Berlin and the death squads went to work. Every fifteen minutes, five storm troopers or cadets were led from their cells and marched or dragged screaming to the red-brick prison wall outside. Their shirts were torn off, a circle was marked on their chests, and they were executed by ten SS sharpshooters. That grisly work done, the bodies were tossed into metal-lined meat trucks and hauled to a small village down the road from the barracks. There the bodies were cremated and the ashes scattered in the wind.

Check . . .

A Bavarian who had helped foil the Beer Hall Putsch eleven years before but was opposed to the annexation of Bavaria to the rest of Germany, was taken out into a swamp and beaten to death with a pickax.

Check.

A music critic who was an outspoken socialist was hanged in his basement and shot four times. His death was listed as a suicide.

Check.

An ex-storm trooper named Grnstadt, who had once been Hitler's personal bodyguard before becoming Gauleiter of a small German town, was dragged from his farmhouse and had both legs and both arms broken with an ax. Then he was dragged screaming by his collar to a small lake on the farm.

"This is a mistake," he screamed. "Call the Fhrer, I was his bodyguard!"

"Verrter," one of the SS troopers snapped.

"I am not a traitor," Grnstadt begged.

They threw him in a small lake and smoked cigarettes as they watched him drown.

Check.

General Kurt von Bredow, who had been an aide to General Schleicher during the Beer Hall Putsch, left his house at seven-thirty to take his dachshund, Gretchen, for her morning walk. He carried the puppy outside and as he stooped down to attach the leash to her collar, a black Mercedes pulled up in front of the building.

"General von Bredow?" one of them asked.

"Yes?"

The three men raised their pistols and fired in unison. A dozen bullets ripped through von Bredow's body.

Check.

Gustav von Kahr, seventy-three, who had also suppressed the 1923 putsch, was found in a swamp near Munich, hacked to death with a pickax.

Check . . .

Check . . .

Check . . .

By dusk, the SS death squads led by Gring and Himmler in Berlin had crossed over 1,500 names from Eicke's list. The Munich operation had slaughtered over 300 more. Before nightfall, almost every name on Eicke's list was crossed out.

Hitler leaned back in his chair and nodded slowly to Vierhaus.

"Done and done," he said with relief.

Only Rohm was left.

In the basement of Stadelheim prison, Rhm sat on an iron cot. He was sweating heavily and had taken off his shirt. His barrel-chest was black with wet, matted hair. He looked up as the cell door swung open and Vierhaus entered. He handed Rhm copies of newspapers with sketchy accounts of Hummingbird. He laid a loaded pistol on top of the paper.

"The Fhrer gives you one more chance to make your peace," Vierhaus said.

Rhm looked up at Vierhaus and laughed.

"If I am to be shot, tell Adolf to do it himself," Rhm said arrogantly.

"Suit yourself," Vierhaus said and whirling around, he stalked crablike out of the cell. When he got upstairs, Theodor Eicke was waiting for him. Vierhaus shrugged.

"Obstinate to the end," he said. "Do it."

They waited fifteen minutes. Then Eicke checked the clip in his Luger and charged a round into the chamber.

"Heil Hitler," he said.

"Heil Hitler," Vierhaus answered.

Eicke went down into the musky, dark, basement cell. The guards watched him as he came down the steps, silhouetted against the sunlight on the first floor, a burly angel of death, gun in hand. He said nothing. He walked to Rhm's cell and nodded. The guard opened the door.

Rhm looked up as he entered.

"Well, my friend the exterminator," he said. "So old Adolf does not have the guts to do it himself."

"Chief of Staff, get ready," Eicke said.

Rhm threw back his head.

"Mein Fhrer, mein Fhrer! Heil Hitler!" Rhm yelled.

The pistol roared in Eicke's fist. The first shot hit Rohm in the chest.

"Oh!" he cried out. He looked down with surprise at the wound. Eicke shot him again. A second hole burst open beside the first, knocking him on his side. He started to get up again, his head dangling, blood trickling from his nose.

Eicke stepped closer and shot Rhm in the temple. Rhm's head snapped sideways and he stiffened. Every muscle seemed to tense up. Eicke stood over him. He was about to fire a fourth shot when he heard Rhm's breath rush out and saw his body go limp.

A few minutes later, Vierhaus entered Hitler's office.

"Rhm is finished," he said.

Hitler glowered from beneath bunched eyebrows. There was a moment when he might have felt fleeting remorse but it quickly passed. He nodded.

"So . . . the opera is over," he said. And then slowly he clapped his hands together.

"Bravo . . ."

And now he is in control of the German Army, Vierhaus thought to himself. Now the police are under the control of Himmler. In one night, Hitler has eradicated the heart and soul of the SA and almost all of his outspoken political opponents. He is absolute master of Germany. Now all of Europe is within his grasp.

Hitler looked up at Vierhaus, his eyes glittering, his blood lust still not sated.

"Now bring me the Black Lily," he said.

TWENTY-EIGHT.